Viral infections are a major threat in the modern world and new solutions are urgently required to deal effectively with this global concern.
Herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) infections are extremely widespread in the human population. The virus causes a broad range of diseases ranging from labial herpes, ocular keratitis, genital disease and encephalitis (Whitley et al., 1998; Corey and Spear, 1986). The herpetic infection is a major cause of morbidity especially in immunocompromised patients. Following initial infection in epithelial cells, the HSV establishes latency in the host sensory nerve ganglia (Akhtar and Shukla, 2009; Hill et al., 2008). The virus emerges sporadically from latency and causes lesions on mucosal epithelium, skin, and the cornea, among other locations. Prolonged or multiple recurrent episodes of corneal infections can result in vision impairment or blindness, due to the development of herpetic stromal keratitis (HSK) (Kaye et al., 2000). HSK accounts for 20-48% of all recurrent ocular HSV infections leading to significant vision loss (Liesegang, 2001). HSV infection may also lead to other diseases including retinitis, meningitis, and encephalitis (Corey and Spear, 1986).
The development of novel strategies to eradicate herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a global public health priority (Superti et al., 2008). While acyclovir and related nucleoside analogs provide successful modalities for treatment and suppression, HSV remains highly prevalent worldwide. The emergence of acyclovir-resistant virus strains, ability of virus to uniformly establish latency coupled with adverse effects of available anti-herpetic compounds provides a stimulus for increased search for new effective antiviral agents that target additional steps in viral pathogenesis such as cell entry (Schulte et al., 2010; Dambrosi et al., 2010). In addition, the current available treatments are unable to destroy HSV completely and therefore the virus remains dormant and keeps being active from time to time to cause various clinical manifestations. Therefore, there is great need to find suitable biocompatible, multifunctional, and low dimensional (scale lengths comparable to viruses) inorganic/organic agents which work to neutralize the virus infectivity, destabilize and possibly dismantle the virus particles. Recent developments in nanotechnology offer opportunities to re-explore biological properties of known antimicrobial compounds by manipulation of their sizes (Travan et al., 2010).